We must promote academic integrity--now.(point of view)

Academic dishonesty is hardly a new phenomenon, but in the Internet Age, college educators increasingly are beleaguered by what might be termed "a culture of cheating." In the sociological sense of the phrase, academic deceit has become virtually a custom of a society. Its rapid multiplication also suggests a biological metaphor: a spreading plagiarism plague. In reality, cheaters are not grown in Petri dishes, but they are--to a significant extent--formed and shaped by our institutions of learning.

Many high schools, colleges and universities include statements about academic fraud in their student handbooks, but I doubt that many infractions of these prohibitions--however sternly stated--are ever disciplined. It stands to reason that cheating behavior, regardless of the motivation, would not increase in a climate of strict policy enforcement--and we who are on the front lines of education know academic fraud is far too common in our classrooms. Scholarship and student surveys support the notion that cheating is rampant, as does the …